I don’t know how Job felt when he sat in his pile of ashes with his children dead and his wealth stolen and his body decaying, but I have sat on the edge of my bed in tears, crying out to God over my suffering. And like Job, I have wondered why. Why was I given this burden to bear? Why did I have to suffer? And as if in answer, I was given more suffering to bear.
At one point or another, we all suffer. But what adds to our suffering is the suspicion that it’s meaningless. If our suffering serves a just cause, we can at least endure knowing it does something noble. Or if our suffering is the just consequence of our sin, at least we can accept responsibility for our actions.
But often we find ourselves in situations like Job’s, where we aren’t suffering nobly or justly. We’re just suffering. We fall ill. Someone hurts us. Our minds betray us. Our child gets sick. Our job is downsized. We lose a loved one. Nothing noble or just, only suffering.
It’s in these circumstances that we’re most tempted to doubt and despair, because we cannot see the pattern, the order to existence. Where’s the meaning in all this suffering? How is God glorified if I suffer for no apparent reason? You can hear the echoes of Job: “Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?” (3:23).
And without meaning, suffering is exponentially harder to endure.
When Suffering Feels Meaningless
Endurance—as a type of the virtue courage—involves vulnerability to suffering for the sake of the good. But if there is no good, if it’s senseless suffering that you’re trying to endure, your courage will hardly sustain you. The good is the hope that keeps you moving and allows you to get out of bed each day, despite pain, with the knowledge there is a promised redemption of all things, an order to your suffering.
Without that good, eventually you will fall into despair. You will conclude that this suffering isn’t worth the pain, and any kind of relief is better than endurance. Which is why so many turn to alcohol, illegal drugs, technological distractions, pornography, gambling, and other ways of numbing themselves to avoid the reality of suffering. But it doesn’t work. The suffering is always beneath the surface, waiting to make itself known again.
At one point or another, we all suffer. But what adds to our suffering is the suspicion that it’s meaningless.
The question for all humans, not only non-Christians but Christians as well, is how to suffer well. You will suffer from circumstances that are not noble or just; they just are. In those moments, what will make a difference is whether you believe your suffering is truly meaningless or not. Your ability to endure and persevere through hard times will depend on your ability to fix your hope on the promise that no tear is shed senselessly. The God who sent his Son to suffer and die on our behalf is making all things new.
Christians have a promise from God through the apostle Paul that he is working all things, which includes our suffering, for our good. In Romans 8:28, Paul tells us that “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” This truth feels hard to reconcile with the reality and day-to-day experience of suffering. “Can these bones live?” (Ezek. 37:3). Can this pain be turned into something beautiful? Can my suffering actually be redeemed? Can there be any meaning to this affliction?
Suffering Teaches Us to Comfort
One way God redeems our suffering is by allowing us to comfort others with the comfort we received through Christ:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. (2 Cor. 1:3–5)
We need each other to make it through this life. We need the comfort of Christ shared through the brothers and sisters of Christ, through the body of Christ. And how powerful that comfort is when it comes from those who have also experienced affliction themselves! They possess an experiential knowledge that can help mentor and comfort the person currently afflicted.
In my experience, knowing that my suffering has helped others has enabled me to see that my struggle bears fruit. It’s not just empty affliction; it produces something beautiful through community.
Of course, being able to comfort others because of your own story of suffering doesn’t mean your suffering is any less painful, but it does mean it’s not senseless. It changes people. It can even save people.
Knowing that my suffering has helped others has enabled me to see that my struggle bears fruit.
The suffering I experienced and caused others through my mental illness was still real and substantial. Its consequences had to be addressed and sometimes grieved. But the comfort I brought to others from my experiences gave that suffering meaning. And that counted for something too.
What this also means is that your suffering is not your own. When you go through times of affliction, you’re laying the groundwork to bear witness to Christ’s comfort to others in the future. How you endure, how you suffer, matters. It will give them hope for their own affliction.
This doesn’t mean you have to suffer perfectly. You can’t, no matter how hard you try. As with Job, God has grace for your struggle with suffering and doubts about suffering. But it does mean your suffering can also be a gift to those around you. And that matters.
Suffering Teaches Us to Hope
Another way our suffering gets redeemed is through the development of hope. Paul writes in Romans 5:3–5, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Although Paul’s sufferings were in the form of religious persecution, the general principle remains the same regardless of what form it takes. Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character. It develops a virtuous, righteous character in you as you endure hard times and learn to rely on God. And that character further develops hope. Hope and courage (of which endurance is a type) go together. The reason hope “does not put us to shame” is that the Holy Spirit “has been given to us.” The Spirit teaches us to hope in times of affliction. We’re not alone in our suffering.
To learn the values of endurance, character, and hope through suffering may seem like a raw deal. Surely there must be easier ways to develop these traits and virtues, ways that don’t involve circumstances like people we love dying or all our worldly possessions being taken, as in the case of Job.
It’s a mistake to think about sanctification in mathematical terms, as if we could weigh on a scale the realities of evil in this world versus the sanctification that results from enduring those evils in hope. At best, we can know that tragedies happen, that evil happens, that suffering happens, and that one small way our suffering is redeemed is that we grow and become more Christlike.
Thinking of sanctification as the only good to come from suffering may be too limiting in most circumstances, but ignoring the profound growth we go through during hard times is shortsighted. A healthy perspective on suffering acknowledges that God takes our difficult circumstances and uses them to make us more like his Son.
More importantly, in Paul’s words in Romans 8, it’s clear that God providentially works our suffering for our good. The mystery is that we don’t always get to know what that good is. Often we don’t. But that doesn’t mean there is no good.
This is where the virtue of hope is so critical. To endure an affliction with courage, you must have hope that God is working your good, even when you can’t imagine what that good could possibly be. That has to be OK. It has to be OK with you that you’re finite and you aren’t promised to know how God is working his perfect will for your good out of love.
To endure an affliction with courage, you must have hope that God is working your good even when you can’t imagine what that good could possibly be. That has to be OK.
Job got to see his fortune and family restored to him. But he never learned from God in this life why he went through his period of affliction. Instead, God spoke out of a whirlwind and essentially told him, “Who are you to question me?” (Job 38:2). So it goes with most of us. Even if we manage to recover from our suffering, we may not know, until we see God face-to-face, why we had to endure what we did.
But there are things we can know. We know that God is a loving God who cares intimately for his children. We know that God is in control. We know that God is faithful to his promises. So we’re not ignorant, and our hope’s not without a foundation. Based on these truths, we hope, perhaps even as we sit on the edge of our beds in tears.
God Knows, and That’s Enough
Our suffering is redeemed by a God who is “making all things new” (Rev. 21:5). That doesn’t mean our afflictions aren’t painful to go through. That doesn’t mean we don’t mourn or weep or cry out in frustration or need help or a friend to sit with us to keep us safe. All it means is that our suffering isn’t meaningless. It matters. It’s still hard, but it does something.
In the deepest sense, that meaning is a mystery to us. We don’t get to see how God is working all things together for good. We just get to hope that he is and wait and see what he has in store. But that hope is powerful. It allows us to endure hard times without falling into despair, by focusing on the good God has promised. And we can know lesser but still significant ways God redeems our suffering. We get to comfort others with the comfort of Christ, and we grow in character and hope.
The same God who sent his Son to suffer and die for us knows our afflictions and loves us. As hard as life is, we don’t have to despair. Suffering isn’t meaningless. It’s mysterious but not meaningless. It matters to God. Our duty is to endure with hope. God will honor that hope and redeem our suffering. Because he is faithful.
The Gospel Coalition